When times are tough, what the public most need to distract them is a new theme park and the French have decided that the theme should be Napoleon Bonaparte so he can bring as much joy as he did when he was alive.
Oh, how the Haitians must have partied when he reintroduced slavery and how the 100,000 Haitians slaves who rebelled must have cheered as they were bundled into makeshift gas chambers in the hull of ships and executed with poisonous gas.
Behold the joy of the 6 million left dead across Europe after 17 years of Napoleons continual wars which took in Italy, Austria, Egypt, Malta, Syria, Russia, Spain, Portugal, Prussia, Poland and Germany.
The 3000 men who surrendering in Jaffa, Syria, probably couldn't believe their luck when Napoleon decided rather than take them back to France, the preferable way to deal with them was to hack them to death with bayonets to save bullets.
How the world booed and hissed at the spoilsport Duke of Wellington as he ruined their fun by giving the tiny Frenchie a damn good licking at Waterloo and banished him to an island in the Atlantic Ocean.
'The theme park is a fantastic way to teach young people about history' so said France's tourism minister Frederic Lefebvre so other countries should exploit their murderous tyrants and dictators with a fun filled day out.
Just imagine how much fun there is to be had at Stalinland or Genghis Khan Towers where the kids can thrill at the wholesale massacre of civilian populations.
Alternatively, we can just not re-invent tyrants and dictators who are responsible for wars and the killing of millions as somehow worthy of celebration. Just a thought.
8 comments:
Just about every historical leader has a long list of sins and evil deeds.
Very true nog which is why we should be wary of who we choose to put on a pedestal.
The nimitz museum in fredericksburg texas occasionally reenacts an “island assault” typical of the south pacific war. In it they compare american and Japanese weapons, tactics and views of war. They fire guns, a small cannon, crank up a tank and light up a flame thrower. In no part do they glorify war. The speak of the horror war. It is striking and memorable.
q
maybe the french plan to do the same thing?
q
I think we should leave the French to celebrate who they want. It all reminds me of the people who got upset about the statue of Bomber Harris in Westminster. We told them where to go, and rightly so.
In France q, they have statues of Napoleon all over the place so i can't see them doing anything other than explaining what a lovely chap he was. He may well have been a great leader and tactician and all that but he was still a warmonger and since when do we celebrate them?
I have a bit of a problem with all statues and celebrations for our former war participants Cheezy, haven't we got anyone else to celebrate apart from the people who were good at killing other people?
We certainly do; there are memorials to all sorts of people all over London. And it's not just blue plaques and statues. People like Charles Dickens, Florence Nightingale, Michael Faraday, Dr Johnson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Fleming and Sigmund Freud even have entire museums given over to them.
I think the point of war memorials such as (to use the example I introduced) the Arthur Harris one is to commemorate all those who fought and died while working for Bomber Command and thereby doing their bit to keep us free and sovereign people. To help succeeding generations remember the sacrifice that they made.
(I read the other day that flying in Bomber Command was statistically the second most dangerous job you could have during WW2... second only to being in a German U-boat)
You do raise a thought-provoking point though. And I think these sorts of memorials are more easily justified when the people being memorialised are engaged in a purely defensive war (such as WW2), rather than any colonial adventure like what George III or Tony Blair involved us in.
I take your point about the Bomber Harris statue and the defensive war.
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